UAE ‘dis­ap­pointed’ to be on EU list of non-com­pli­ant tax ju­ris­dic­tions

The gov­ern­ment commits to be fully com­pli­ant and be off the list by 2018

The UAE Gov­ern­ment has is­sued a state­ment ex­press­ing its sur­prise and dis­ap­point­ment that it has been in­cluded by the Euro­pean Union in a list of non-com­pli­ant tax ju­ris­dic­tions.

In the state­ment, the UAE high­lighted its full com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing the high­est in­ter­na­tional stan­dards of fi­nan­cial over­sight and tax reg­u­la­tion, say­ing it will con­tinue to work with in­ter­na­tional part­ners to de­liver this.

The UAE’s Un­der-Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, You­nis Haji Al Khouri, said, “The UAE has worked to meet the Euro­pean Union’s re­quire­ments in terms of ex­chang­ing tax-re­lated in­for­ma­tion.”

“We have com­mit­ted to a re­form process which will be fi­nalised by Oc­to­ber 2018, and we are ab­so­lutely con­fi­dent this will en­sure the UAE is swiftly re­moved from the list.

“We look for­ward to mov­ing into the next phase of co­op­er­a­tion with our EU part­ners on the im­por­tant is­sue of tax reg­u­la­tion.”

Trans­parency

The state­ment added, “Since early 2017, the UAE has worked trans­par­ently with Euro­pean Union coun­ter­parts to en­sure that we meet the cri­te­ria laid down by Euro­pean Union Mem­ber States.

“As the Euro­pean Union has it­self noted, the UAE has ad­dressed each and ev­ery is­sue the EU has raised. The UAE has drafted, leg­is­lated and im­ple­mented sig­nif­i­cant re­forms to en­sure that we re­main in lock­step with our OECD part­ners and in­ter­na­tional

It con­tin­ued, “The sole out­stand­ing is­sue is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Base ero­sion and profit shift­ing, BEPS, Min­i­mum Stan­dard, which we have com­mit­ted to fi­nalise by Oc­to­ber 2018 and rat­ify by March 2019 — giv­ing our fed­eral struc­ture suf­fi­cient time to al­low for rat­i­fi­ca­tion across the seven Emi­rates. We stand by this re­al­is­tic time­line.”

“The UAE will con­tinue to work with in­ter­na­tional part­ners on this is­sue, and is con­fi­dent that it will be recog­nised as an in­ter­na­tion­ally com­pli­ant part­ner at the EU’s next re­view,” the state­ment con­cluded. best prac­tice.”